The Anamorphic Art Of Julian Beever

Julian Beever got his start on pavement creations while he was attending art school; he would make two-dimensional chalk drawings and receive pennies from passers-by. He began experimenting with *anamorphic trompe-l’oeil chalk creations after seeing tiles being removed from a street, an effect he tried to recreate on paper. When viewed in a photograph, Beever’s creations appear amazingly realistic. Those who walk past them don’t get quite the same view, though. The 3D effect works only from one certain angle, the place where Beever positions his tripod-mounted camera. From any other angle, the work is distorted and odd-looking. In the almost 20 years Beever has been producing pavement art, he has worked in at least 12 countries. Several of his projects have been chalk advertisements for big brands (Aveeno, Levi’s, Sony), while others have been featured on TV shows around the globe. You can see more of Julian Beever’s art here.

*Anamorphic means to be intentionally distorted.

Trompe-l’oeil is French for “deceit of the eye”. It is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three-dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting.